THIS MYSTIC LIFE PODCAST

Lesson in Having & Being CHOCOLATE

EPISODE: Lesson in Having & Being CHOCOLATE
~ This Mystic Life PODCAST ~
Recorded: May 17th, 2026 Released: May 22nd, 2026

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

In this episode Sarah shares a practical tale regarding the #ACIM teaching on “Having and Being.” She explores the concept of learning spiritual “lessons” and how for some it can feel like old style correction rather than #miraculous revealing. The Comforter has come and the “lessons” of The Holy Spirit are lessons of LOVE and Innocence. When we follow Guidance, that is all we will ever discover!

CLICK-On CC (Closed Captions) for subtitles in your language.

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PODCAST INTRO

Welcome to This Mystic Life podcast, a podcast that aims to look at the world differently, with total responsibility for sight.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: Lesson in Having & Being CHOCOLATE

Welcome to this Mystic Life podcast. A podcast that aims to look at the world differently, with total responsibility for sight. Today I’d like to talk about the lessons of the Holy Spirit as it pertains to A Course in Miracles.

I’d like to focus on the word lessons, first of all, because I think they are synonymous with being chastised and being told what to do in a negative manner. They are not synonymous with being graciously guided for most people because of their schooling and upbringing and what they understand by being educated. It’s not always a wholesome, whole experience of being opened up to knowledge and awareness and understanding.

It’s very much about learning by rote and by remembering and retention, lists of things that at the time no child feels they will ever need to know. So I’d like to orientate to what came clear this morning needs to be looked at. When I heard someone say, “Yeah, I guess it’s my lesson,” I thought, “Oh no, whatever that lesson is, you think that is being taught to you, don’t learn that lesson!”

Because just by the tone of your voice, that is a lesson of sadness and sorrow and regret and fear. And so I can tell you quite directly who the teacher is, and it is not the Holy Spirit. And so we must be very aware that even if you want to maintain the word lesson, it is a happy lesson you will be learning.

And I’m suggesting for those that are aware, and it’s all about awareness and being aware of what we come to this course with, all of the previous experiences and the maladaptation to the world and the prejudices we bring with us. And so if you’re aware you already have a prejudice against being taught because it’s been pejorative in your experience, I highly recommend the word discoveries, the discoveries of the Holy Spirit. And in a joining this morning, before there was a departure on what I would call a new adventure of forgiveness, that tweak in the mind was needed for there to be truly an open, happy learner.

And it’s not a persona or a person that we’re tweaking when we talk this way. It’s the mind’s aperture. It’s the focus that is closed down in conservation and conservatism because it’s afraid.
It’s afraid to open to what it would have previously considered hope. It’s not open to that its offering to the world will be met with love and blessing. It’s not open to receiving love and blessing from the world.

And so the aperture through which we are looking, the portal of presence has become reduced. And therefore it’s necessary to come to the Holy Spirit with a challenge. To say, it’s up to You to convince me.

Today I feel scared, I feel apprehensive, I feel like the unknown is nothing but bad for me. And so I challenge You, and with the hope that You’ll be able to accept my challenge, to convince me that I’m mistaken. I would really, really, really, and this is where the openness comes in, like to see how it is that I’m mistaken.

Because I do not like how I feel. And in our openness and welcome to discover, to uncover and dispel illusions, to discover, take the covering off what is shielding our eyes from the awareness that we have a perceptual problem. When we open to that, even with a challenge, putting all the responsibility onto the Holy Spirit, and all the welcome into our heart, to simply sit by a Prince of Peace, poised upon the throne, watching and waiting to be convinced that this is an avenue in which to trust and follow.

And very kindly, the Holy Spirit will appear in a jester’s form, and meet and match you where you’re at, in such an intimate and playful way, that you will not feel like a king who’s being scolded or condemned for taking a wrong direction. Your sovereignty will not feel threatened. Instead, you will playfully watch this jester from upon your throne, not feeling in any way confronted, and be led by a heart opening and a leap into a playful encounter, which is very revealing.

And it’s in the revealing nature of this playful encounter with the Holy Spirit, and it will come to you in a way that is both familiar to you and comfortable. It will have a sense of repartee that is natural to you, and the way you like to be, and will open up your heart to seeing and discovering that you are in fact beloved. And that’s the only discovery of the Holy Spirit.

That’s the only lesson that the Holy Spirit would have you learn, that you are beloved and innocent, and that everything is okay in reality. And so, while we are stuck in a Maya and a mesmerism of time and space, which is really a blanket of doubt across the mind, we are encouraged not to fight, to struggle, to get from under the blanket, but to still ourselves, and come into a sense of being shown. And then the corner can be lifted up, and the light can restore, and the shame can be blanched away by the light of day.

And that’s all the Holy Spirit wants for you. That’s the only lesson, if you like that word, that will ever be offered for you to learn. A lesson in mistaken identity that ends in a belly laugh, that undoes everything that went before, any ideas of struggle or personal responsibility.

All that false responsibility will just dissipate and disappear, and you’ll be left laughing, wondering, what on earth, what on earth was I thinking? And when our thinking is on earth, and our thinking is grounded in a mesmerism of fear and pain and shame, then it is understandable that it is hard to lift our face up to anything that might want to teach us a lesson. Because we are so in the mud of the mesmerism of believing this doubt thought against ourselves, that we are responsible for form, that we have done something wrong in the past, that is beyond our control to fix or face now. And so it’s the illusion of time and space, of distance, and that the error has happened, and now we are unable to afford ourselves correction that needs to be questioned if we are to be happy learners.

For if it truly was in the past, this mistaken thinking, then we would be lost to a foreign shore and abandoned to a world that is loveless. But that is not the case. We are in fact in the real world right now, dreaming of exile, and all that is required to restore us to awareness of wholeness exactly as it is, is the release of the attention on the problem solving.

And when we pull back from that attention on problem solving, the answer can be gently given to us. And if you missed the last episode, that’s the focus there, and you might really enjoy watching it. In this episode, our focus now very gently turns into having and being.

Having and being is the answer. The awareness that, like in our movie, I Heart Huckabees, where Dustin Hoffman is a metaphysical detective, and it seems to be a grand play of awakening that’s turning everyone upside down and inside out until they come to this understanding that everything you could ever want or be, you already have and are. The answer is always present.

And when you sink into that in a practical way, then it’s as if your fingertips become magnetic and the very desire, and remember the desire is really a call for love, the desire for love shows up seemingly in an object form. It can only do that, though, if you have first accepted that having and being are the same, that contentment is your natural state, and that you could never be without whatever you needed. And in that acceptance, the relaxation that comes over the mind is what draws the having and being into awareness, while you seem to have a form component to your life.

And so this is always going to be a very practical podcast. And so I’m going to give you an example of what happened the other day. And this is not an extraordinary example, but it’s the common touch of it, I think, that is very helpful.

So I have been guided to eat in a certain way for a while. And then six months of eating in this way, there was a feeling that there was a call for chocolate. Chocolate has been part of this guided eating, but it was not present where I was.

And I, again, questioned that I could have a desire for something that wasn’t given. When having and being are the same, and you recognize as a desire for something, and then there is a feeling of sacrifice, if it’s not present, then that is what actually needs to be questioned, the belief in sacrifice. Because what we really want to address is that call for love.

Nobody needs chocolate in a moment, unless it is the given portal to the awareness that your call for love has been answered and that you are beloved. And so I sat there and I said, “There’s no way I could be without something I need. There’s just no way.”

And I released the attachment to having some chocolate. And I released the attachment to coveting the bar of something that wasn’t quite chocolate that someone else had when they said they didn’t want to share it with me. And so I humbly came back in a very bright and open state of mind.

And I didn’t feel to go foraging or go out and shop and get and attain a piece of chocolate to satisfy this thought in my mind. I really sank into, I need do nothing. I need do nothing. Having and being are the same. Everything I could ever want or need is present. And I stood up and suddenly walked over to the kitchen, which is not my own and I do not know.

And believing we had bought all the food we had with us, opened a random bottom cupboard, lent into the very back of it. And there was a packet of hot chocolate. Now you might say, that’s not quite chocolate.

That was my initial thought. And I immediately got shown to make it very concentrated and put it in the freezer. And instantly, it was not just chocolate, but it was such an answer to the call for love that was arising in the mind in that moment, that it was exquisite.

It was absolutely gorgeous. It just rocked my world. I couldn’t stop talking about how amazing it tasted, because it was pure forgiveness. It was purely given. And it was given because the clarity had come in about what I was really and truly asking for. I was asking for that call for love to be answered.

When you’re thirsty and you desire a glass of water, it is a call for love. And so there’s no hierarchy here. And the recognition of the having and being that they are the same, allows the system, as you appear to be a persona in a body, to relax and stop grabbing for what it thinks it needs.

And in fact, to forget what it thinks it needs, having given over the prayer so completely, either the thirst will quench of itself with the water of life, effervescent in your mind, or in some way the water will appear. But it is only because the aperture of the mind has now opened to one of holy expectation, because it’s in a system of wholeness, and nothing can be taken away from a system of one that is whole and in integrity.

And so in restoring yourself to that awareness, it was almost, it happened again today, it was almost like my fingertips became electric, and I could feel in the air a movement through time and space, a thickness of things, almost like the entire system was like a plasma, like underwater, that I was moving through, rather than that I was a separate entity in a vacuum of time and space that was striving to exist.

And I can feel it now as I move my hands around. And so, for wherever you find yourself today, whatever adventures of forgiveness you are on with the Holy Spirit, and whatever it is that you have made manifest as your call for love, begin to release the objective. Begin to release the object, so that it doesn’t become an idol, and sink into the having and being the being the same.

And then in that chocolate state of mind, in that quality of receiving and welcome and wholeness and completeness, whatever is truly helpful will come to your awareness. Because it’s the lack of awareness that was the problem before. That was the perceptual problem, because I wasn’t coming from wholeness in that moment.

And yet, I was very close, so it didn’t take much to tip me back into that experience. And in fact, the discovery, again, the discoveries of the Holy Spirit, was what delighted me more than anything else. And even though the chocolate tasted absolutely gorgeous, it was the discovery and the richness and the wealth of joy that came with that closeness to myself and the Holy Spirit and having and being the same that brought the delight.

And that’s what I wish for you today. This is a world of desire, not a world of will. And so it is important that you not hide your desires from your awareness. It is vital that you allow them up so that they can be harnessed by the Holy Spirit and used as delightful breadcrumbs and used as delightful breadcrumbs to lead you along the light way. Happy learners, all stones removed along the path, joyfully, gently following.

And so when something is given for you, it is not taken from anyone else. It is a sense that it blesses the whole universe, what is given for you, because in your receiving of it, you receive it on behalf of the whole universe. And we must become good receivers as well as good givers, because giving and receiving are the same. And it is only to ourself that we ever give.

And when you step into that experience of giving and receiving are the same, and you find this ultimate joy in giving, giving over, giving way, this yielding to the Holy Spirit and the discoveries that are available in every moment for you. When you are into that giving state of mind, almost like a continuous breath, like they have when you play didgeridoo, it’s a continuous circular breath. When that becomes your natural way of breathing, the having and being, the giving and receiving, when you get into giving, then that is the shift from specialness, which seemed to idolize things and time and space, and to want to grab and get them.

When you move into giving, not getting to give, but just pure giving, that is the shift from specialness to holiness. That is really what “holy relationship” is about. You become in holy relationship with everything of time and space, because you are now perceiving it all with the Holy Spirit as an opportunity to bless the universe!

You are perceiving it with the Holy Spirit as a way of giving to yourself, a way of receiving, of being sourced in a continuous and eternal way. It is that portal from the eternal, where, as St. Clare says, you “mirror eternal realities.” That your world then becomes this relaxed, almost like soup, a bit like “the thickness of things” I was describing, through which you live and breathe. The whole universe is an aqualung of in and out, and giving and receiving, and there’s no separation.

There is no you and them, and there is no rock and a hard place. It’s all the same. Despite the variance and the colors and the conditions that seem to still be in place, that we are looking at with Jesus as we raise them to awareness, those conditions of fear. We can still, as we go along, allow ourselves to be rather than try to maintain ourselves as happy learners.

And it’s that release and that yielding into being shown and led that makes for a happy life. And I feel it’s more vital now than ever to get into that slipstream as the functionality and structures of the world begin to shift before your eyes, that you now get into the slipstream of giving and receiving, and the slipstream of having and being. And when you’re in that slipstream, there is no other, and you are in the I-need-do-nothing effortless ease that the Course is pointing to.

And so that’s it for today, the discovery that having and being are the same. And that the only lesson the Holy Spirit would have you learn is that you are innocent and beloved and home.

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All talks are for entertainment purposes only. For any life challenges please consult a mental health professional.

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A Course in Miracles, ACIM, Belief, Chocolate, Chocolate craving, Chocolate state of mind, completeness, desire, Dustin Hoffman, Forgiveness, giving, giving receiving, God, having being, Holy Spirit, iHeart Huckabee’s, Jesus, lessons of the holy spirit, manifestation, Mind Training, mindfulness, mindset, miracles, mirror eternal realities, Movie watching for Awakening, mysticism, Peace, Peace of God, peace of mind, receiving, sacrifice, Spirit, St. Clare, teaching learning, the law of God, the law of the vacuum, This Mystic Life, wholeness

 

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